Western Animation /
The Adventures of Puss in Boots

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A spin-off of the Shrek series on Netflix and a Recycled: The Series to Puss in Boots. This computer-animated cartoon features Puss In Boots, chronicling his life a defender of the lost city of San Lorenzo after he accidentally breaks the spell keeping it hidden.

The show premiered in January 2015 with five episodes. It is the third film by Dreamworks Animation to be given a spin off by Netflix.

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This show provides examples of:

Accidental Truth: During "Boots", Puss is trying to make it look like he knows what each artifact does in the vault. One he mentions is a goblet that creates invisibility. Later on when Dulcinea states that is actually what it does, he is genuinely surprised.

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The Crown of Souls which had to be dismantled to keep it from being used for evil.

Art Shift: Flashbacks are all depicted in a 2D art style with limited animation, as if illustrations from a picture book.

Ascended Extra: Eames becomes the most prominent generic citizen of San Lorenzo over time, even getting a few A Day in the Limelight episodes, even if all of it centers around how unnoticeable and unlikable he is.

Backstory Invader: In Season 5, the episode "The Iceman Melteth" suddenly features a new orphan, Li'l Pequena, who appears in five episodes before "Remember Me Not" reveals she's a fairy who can implant Fake Memories, and an agent (or, as it turns out in the season finale, mind-controlled slave) of the Blind King. Dulcinea grows suspicious when she realises Toby's pictures don't include her, and we see her altering Puss's memories so that she was the first person he met in San Lorenzo, and Dulcinea's so that she'd been popping up all through the series insisting they were best friends. And when that doesn't work, she alters everyone's memories to believe Dulcinea is a monster from the Netherworld...

A kid-friendly version of it. Puss calls how much the magician from "Golem" loved the fish he ate "kind of creepy", as the flash-back pans to a wall full of pictures of the magician and his fish.

Vina has mentioned several times she has a crush on her fellow orphan Toby, who is a pig.

Beware the Nice Ones: Generally Dulcinea is incredibly kind and all loving, but get her mad and the claws come out. Even becomes a plot point in "Sword". The good sword chose her thinking she wouldn't be willing to hurt anyone, and is quite surprised when proven wrong.

Blood Knight: A tone down version but nothing makes Puss happier than a good fight. Clearly shown in "Sword" when discussing Dulcinea's upcoming fight with Thriffith.

Cerebus Syndrome: Season 2 ends up having a lot more plot-focused episodes or even episodes with a more tighter continuity than normal, especially towards the second half.

Character Development: Over the course of the series, Puss becomes somewhat less arrogant and more inclined to think things through rather than immediately attacking. Conversely, Dulcinea becomes less naive, and even prepared to consider violence as a solution (although not her favoured one). By the last season, she and Puss have become a Battle Couple. This is why they retain their memories of Puss's time in San Lorenzo even after it never happened; it made them better heroes.

City of Adventure: San Lorenzo and all of its magical treasures draws all kinds of adventures towards it. This is not a good thing and the town was magically veiled off from the rest of the world for a reason. There are apocalyptic consequences.

Comes Great Responsibility: The main theme in any episode involving Goodsword. The sword expects its wielder to act responsibly with its power.

Continuity Creep: The first season is extremely episodic, while the second season starts off with seemingly episodic plots, they all have a cause and effect that directly tie each other together before building up to a plotline that the rest of the series continues to follow up on.

Continuity Nod: Puss' backstory as given in Puss in Boots is mentioned several times. In particular, Puss will always be nice to the orphans because he was one himself.

Cleevil, the little Goblin girl whose name even rhymes with evil. She is actually a very sweet kid even when tricked into evil by The Duchess. Same goes with the Black Cats, who have learned to turn their bad luck into a gift.

The Netherworld. While the realm itself is rather ominous and the portal brought forth the Bloodwolf, he and everything evil to come out of the realm is actually something from the normal realm that a mage banished to the Netherworld. The actual native denizens of the Netherworld are actually quite peaceful.

Defeat Means Friendship: After defeating the Sphinx, giving her nothing to guard any more, Puss invites her to guard the entrance to San Lorenzo instead.

Dem Bones: Undead Skeletons now live in San Lorenzo as regular inhabitants.

Dirty Coward: Jack Sprat, one of Puss' best friends despite the fact that all he does is exploit Puss for his own benefit.

Disaster Dominoes: Puss' bad luck from becoming a black cat in "Luck" causes a sequence of bad luck starting with a person hitting his hand while hammering, the dropped hammer landing on the foot of someone carrying a box, the dropped box toppling over a house of cards and scaring a frog that lands on a woman's face, who panics and knocks into a ladder, causing a roof painter to fall off and dropping his paintbrush into the head of an artist.

Doomed by Canon: No matter what shippers say is going on between Puss and Dulcinea, it will not pan out in the long run due to this series taking place between his self-titled film and Shrek 2. The series finale does set up a situation that would explain where Dulcinea went, but subverts it at the last second leaving Puss and Dulcinea together and simply does not address what happens afterward.

Downer Ending: In "Star", the chaos created by Esteban the wishing star has become so bad, that he insists Dulcinea tell everyone about him as doing this will undo all the wishes, but will also put him to sleep forever.

Dowsing Device: The Silver Dowsing Rod of Akhenaten, first acquired in "Scimitar", is a magical dowsing rod capable of finding literally anything its user can think of, making it one of the most valuable and frequently used treasures of San Lorenzo. Puss managed to break it at some point before "Before They Hatch", since it would have short-circuited the plot.

Extra Eyes: The pirate captain Two-Eyed Alonso gets his name because he has an eyepatch ... and an extra eye in his forehead. His skull and crossbones has three eyeholes as well.

Fake Special Attack: The guild of darkness makes a big deal of their Luck Blast ability, but in battle, it only seems to be good at annoying, requiring copious amounts of Beam Spam to be effective. It's not even a super secret technique; all black cats can do it inherently.

The two part finale of Season 2 are named "Si" and "No?", which can be put together to make "Sino?", foreshadowing that the Mage Sino that appears is an imposter, and is also not the only time "Sino" can be split into "Yes" and "No"

In the finale of Season 4 Orange finds it amusing when Dulcinea says she's never met a tulpa before, but won't say why. In the Series Finale we learn she's already met Green ... and then that she is White.

A thief successfully distracts Puss in the middle of a fight by dangling a piece of string in front of him.

Pajuna the cow who runs a milk bar serves her own milk. During a career day she offers to show the kids how to milk her but Dulcinea objects this idea as being "icky".

"Mouse" involves a mouse that Puss wants to eat, much to the anger of the orphans who want to keep it as a pet. Dulcinea gets particularly upset at Puss's constant denial of the fact since, as a cat herself, she wants to eat the mouse just as much as he does, but is willing to admit it and show restraint by not doing it. But she eats him knowing how dangerous he is.

Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Although Dulcinea is usually very sweet and girly, she can be bad*** and tough when she wants to be, especially when the children are threatened.

Amusingly, it's a running gag that Dulcinea's rhymes aren't always as helpful as she hopes they are. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't contribute anything positive at all, and sometimes they just go ignored. In some cases, she's had to outright rewrite the book or make up her own when they failed. Which may foreshadow the fact that they're gibberish that the author wrote in a weekend to make a quick buck.

HeelFace Revolving Door: Uli pretends to be a friend so he can trick the others into helping summon the Bloodwolf twice, but ultimately decides to sacrifice himself to atone for his crimes.

HeelFace Turn: The arrangement with The Duchess started out as an Enemy Mine with Puss to take on the Bloodwolf, but as episodes progress, she has grown closer to Puss and Co and rediscovered her bond with Artephius, graduating her into this trope.

Holding Back the Phlebotinum: The Silver Dowsing Rod mentioned above. It is so powerful that it is eventually broken in Season 5 so that missing something can still be a compelling plot.

Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Every episode name in the first two seasons is a One-Word Title while every episode name in season 3 and 4 has two words. Following this trend, almost every episode name in season 5 and 6 is three words, but the two part series finale up the ante having four words and five words.

Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Puss believes Dulcinea has this, and so can hold the evil-inducing Scimitar without being affected when they need its help. Ultimately played with; she succumbs after almost the entire episode, but manages to fight back enough afterward to keep from landing the final blow on Puss.

Joke Item: Jack Sprat doesn't have a real sword on him, just a tree branch made to look like a sword. It isn't even a particularly stiff branch, so it can't even be used as a decent bludgeoning weapon.

Kamehame Hadoken: The Black cats of the Guild of Darkness from "Luck" are capable of channeling their bad luck into energy blasts.

Knight of Cerebus: El Moco fills in on the "show got serious once he popped up" variant. The first time he appeared, the show played with continuity a lot more. The second episode he showed up, it ended with the kick off of a long plot line involving restoring San Lorenzo's protective barrier. In the final season episode "Not a Date" this gets inverted; with so many Big Bads dealt with, El Moco's reappearance is treated as a minor annoyance in a Beach Episode. It doesn't help that he's as detached from reality as Artephius at this point.

Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Vina the orphan, for whom "Did you know..." is practically her catch phrase, even though most of the facts she says are either obvious, irrelevant, or made-up.

Literal Metaphor: In "Pigs" the Red Brother of the Pig Ninjas showed how much he cared for his brothers by showing a picture he drew with all four of them inside a heart outline. Turns out later the picture was to remember a time where at one point they lived inside a actual heart.

Literal-Minded: As nice as the Golem is, it is still bound to obey the logical interpretation of the command given to him.

Puss: Golem, No! No! You're supposed to make punch! Fruit punch!

Golem: Order not say "Make Punch", order just say "Punch"! Golem must obey!

Logo Joke: The opening from the second episode onward features a Dreamworks Animation SKG logo (changed to Dreamworks Animation Television in later seasons). It is stylized in the 2D animation the rest of the opening is in, and features Puss in place of the boy in the moon, who catches a fish and drops it right into his mouth.

Lovable Coward: Mayor Temoroso of San Lorenzo, rarely seen outside the safety of his barrel, well liked by his people.

Jack Sprat thinks he is this.

Luxury Prison Suite: San Lorenzo's prison is located in its bar. Although Puss insists prisoners can't order drinks while there, Pajuna sells them drinks behind his back anyways because she has a business to run. Ironically this is the only thing the thieves are seen to actually pay for.

Monster of the Week: Season 5 takes on this tone as most episodes deal with something having come out of the Netherworld portal.

Mr. Seahorse: In "Cat Fish", Fiji and Brad are married and Brad is expecting.

Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Puss himself inadvertently breaks the spell protecting San Lorenzo hidden by taking a coin from its treasury, leading to his being made the city's defender.

In "Sphinx" he makes a treat for the orphans to reward them, but accidentally puts a potentially lethal dosage of a powerful energy powder in it instead of sugar.

Needle in a Stack of Needles: "Fountains" involves Puss questing for the Fountain of Youth, which is hidden in the forest of Fountainwood, along with every magical fountain in the world, all unlabelled and completely identical.

Dulcinea and The Sphinx have cartoony designs, with their bigger eyes and Dulcineas Four-Fingered Hands, whereas the other cats in the show have more semi-realistic or realistic ones. Justified in the Sphinxs case as she is supposed to be the mythical Sphinx. Not so in Dulcineas case as she is supposed to be a regular cat like Puss and the other cats.

Cleevil's proportions don't match up with the other goblins seen in the show. This can easily overlooked by her not being the same age as the other goblins, but when she eventually interacts with other goblins, they don't believe Cleevil is actually a goblin.

Both of these above cases have the justification that the two characters in creation are artificial creations.

Noodle Incident: We never see it, but Puss is apparently such a bad cook that he burned down an entire mill trying to make toast.

Not So Above It All: While Dulcinea shows greater control of her feline instincts than Puss, she is not above eating a mouse once it has been revealed that it is genuinely evil and a threat to the town.

Oddly Small Organization: Initially averted with the Orphanage. There are a lot of kids shown to be attending, but only 4 (later 5) have any real focus. Eventually the other kids just stop showing up or talked about at all, which makes the Town of Orphans seem suspiciously short on orphans.

Only the Pure of Heart: Dulcinea notes that Puss has to be a good person because the barrier to San Lorenzo only lets the pure of heart through.

...Or So I Heard: When Senora Zapata elaborates on her Fantastic Racism against goblins, she concludes that they never call you back after a wonderful first date. Puss gives her a weird look, and after a beat she adds "Or ... so I've heard?"

Orphanage of Love: The entire city of San Lorenzo was founded to be a safe haven for orphans of the world, so it's not surprising that its orphanage is one of these.

Our Mermaids Are Different: In "Mermaid", Puss attempts to prove that he is a ladies man by rescuing a mermaid with a beautiful signing voice. However, although beautiful from behind, she turns out to be a real Butter Face, and while her singing voice is angelic, her speaking voice is an irritating screech like nails down a blackboard. And she insists on accompanying Puss everywhere. Her name (Feejee) and appearance are based on the famous 'Fiji Mermaid' hoax: the torso of a monkey stitched on to the tail of a fish.

Pauper Patches: Most residents of the orphanage have them on their clothing.

Puppy-Dog Eyes: A continuing specialty of Puss'. He is unaffected when an orphan tries to do it to him and simply responds by demonstrating how it's really done.

Reset Button:In the Series Finale Puss must go back in time and prevent himself from ever coming to San Lorenzo, to stop the world from ending. But he still remembers his time there .. and he's joined by a Dulcinea who also remembers.

Riddling Sphinx: The Sphinx guarding the Hourglass of Eurythion gives Puss five chances to answer a riddle to claim the hourglass. The classic Riddle of the Sphinx comes first. Puss answers wrong every time even a riddle in which he is given the answer.

Whenever the Duchess swears vengeance for Puss in Boots for cutting off her foot, she always reveals the wrong foot when she tries to show off her artificial leg for emphasis.

In "Sphinx", every time Puss is sent back to town for failing a riddle, something usually hits him no matter how much he dodges. However subverted with the last one he realized that nothing hit him he knows that he is running out of time.

Puss has a tendency to disarm his enemies and then try to use their weapons against them. As he is a cat and most of his enemies are human size or larger, this occasionally doesn't work well in Puss' favor.

Series Goal: Protect the treasure of San Lorenzo until the day the spell that hid the city can be restored.

Ship Tease: When Puss' mentor El Guante Blanco arrives in town, he flirts quite a bit with the star-struck Dulcinea who admitted she had a Precocious Crush on him, to which Puss very visibly gets jealous of until Guante Blanco points out that when the two of them were in danger, Dulcinea rushed to Puss' side first.

Puss takes great offense to anyone who doesn't already know who he is, despite the fact that this is fairly early in his career, so he really hasn't established himself as a big name just yet.

This was the reason one of the Pig Ninja Brothers was kicked out of the group.

Small Role, Big Impact: The Bloodwolf. He only appears in one episode but his influence impacts on the entire show. Even the seasons that follow his defeat heavily revolve around the aftermath of his appearance.

Soul-Powered Engine: The Duchess from "Duchess" uses special machines powered by the souls of wizards that let her use said wizard's trademark spell as her own. While she has a gun to shoot most spells, her mind control spell goes into a remote control she uses to control her victims and a jetpack for her flying spell.

Status Quo Is God: One episode has Puss switch jobs with Temeroso, Puss as mayor, Temeroso as protector. It lasts until the end of the episode.

Swiss Cheese Security: The Sphinx. She becomes the guard of San Lorenzo in the second episode, but the thieves and antagonists have no problem getting in.

Taken for Granite: Happens to the citizens of San Lorenzo in "Mouse". Puss assumes it's because Artephius's stone spell went out of control. It turns out its actually because the titular mouse is a powerful soul stealing sorcerer, and people are turning to stone as a result of having their souls taken from them.

Taking the Bullet: Cleevil does this for Puss. Her thick goblin skin allows her to survive what would have killed Puss.

Throwing Your Sword Always Works: One of the perks of using the Goodsword is that its ability to levitate means it can be thrown efficiently and can even come back.

Took a Level in Dumbass: While he is still fairly competent, Puss's ego and pride blind him far more than any other incarnation of the character. Though, the fact that the show takes place in the earliest part of his career may be related to that.

Total Eclipse of the Plot: When a spell to restore the protective barrier around San Lorenzo is found, it also comes with a prophecy saying the spell must be completed before the eclipse or disaster will come to San Lorenzo.

Travelling at the Speed of Plot: Taken to ridiculous lengths in "Sphinx", where Puss seems to be taking a shorter and shorter time to make the very long trip from San Lorenzo to the Sphinx's location as time to resolve the episode's issue is running out. Pretty much parodied during the last trip where he makes the trip the fastest while carrying his horse.

Unwanted Assistance: Puss's attitude to Toby in "Brothers" after every time Puss nearly caught the criminals, Toby would try to help which lead to them escaping, Puss getting harmed, and Puss getting blamed for letting them get away. invoked

Villainous Breakdown: El Moco is introduced as The Dreaded, but after spending the entire show zig-zagging in how much of a threat he actually is, he is last seen having a complete breakdown and giving up on crime to live in the wild as a monkey.

Visual Pun: The Sphinx is a giant cat with bird wings. Specifically, she is a Sphynx cat.

Yandere: Fiji the mermaid, who after falling for Puss quickly develops a very unhealthy obsession for him.

Fiji: I'm not crazy, I have a mood disorder!

You All Look Familiar: Thieves all look identical to each other, save for the leader wearing a hat. (In later episodes there are several thieves in slightly different hats and one with donkey ears, but those remain the only distinguishing features.

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